Appeals court: Governator’s video game law unconstitutional

A 2005 law making the sale of certain games to minors a crime, including …

It has been a long, mostly disastrous road for Governor Schwarzenegger's 2005 bill that sought to make selling games to minors a crime, as well as to require certain games to carry warning labels. The bill was passed, but Judge Ronald Whyte issued a preliminary injunction against its enforcement before it impacted retail sales in California. In 2007 the law was struck down as being unconstitutional, with Schwarzenegger promising to continue to appeal the decision. Today that appeal was rejected, likely killing the law for good.

While this latest ruling could be appealed to the Supreme Court, the continued effort after these losses would seem almost Sisyphean; the courts have never been kind to bills that seek to put special legislation on video games. "Is there anything out of limits for the Legislature to prohibit to minors? What about games where people eat unhealthy foods and get fat?" Judge Alex Kozinski asked when hearing the appeal. "Why not a law targeting games that teach children bad living habits, such as eating unhealthy food or using plastic bags?"

The studies used as evidence that games were dangerous—above and beyond other forms of media—were found to be unconvincing by the court. Without any causal links, and with no such laws prohibiting minors from purchasing R-rated movies or even reading violent books, singling out video games creates Constitutional problems no lawyer has been able to argue through.

"We couldn’t be happier. Federal courts have found all nine legislative attempts to curtail the sale of violent video games invalid under the First Amendment, definitively showing that video games are protected speech, just like other content such as books, comic books, movies, and music," Jennifer Mercurio, Director of Government Affairs for the Entertainment Consumers Association said.

This is just the latest in a long string of wins for the video game industry in the courts, as attacks on games have turned out to be long and expensive for the states. The lesson still hasn't been learned however, as Leland Yee, the author of the bill, has pledged to keep fighting. "While I am deeply disappointed in today’s ruling, we should not stop our efforts to assist parents in keeping these harmful video games out of the hands of children," he said. "I believe this law will inevitably be upheld as Constitutional by the US Supreme Court. In fact, the high court recently agreed, in Roper v. Simmons (2005), that we need to treat children differently in the eyes of the law due to brain development."

It's unclear what, if anything, the Supreme Court will find that the courts before it failed to notice.

They have to start making people responsible for their own actions. This blame-game nonsense is getting ridiculous. I'm not a fat person, but I wouldn't blame and sue McDonalds if I got fat from eating their food. The same thing goes for video games. People who use the "GTA" defense are just whiny babies who don't think that they should be held accountable for their crimes. Grow up.

They have to start making people responsible for their own actions. This blame-game nonsense is getting ridiculous. I'm not a fat person, but I wouldn't blame and sue McDonalds if I got fat from eating their food. The same thing goes for video games. People who use the "GTA" defense are just whiny babies who don't think that they should be held accountable for their crimes. Grow up.

I completely agree. What really gets me are the parents who freak out when they find their children playing violent games or games they shouldn't be playing. Then after that, they look to blame the VG industry and everyone else, when the true blame should be put on the person they see when they look in the mirror. Take some responsibility for your child.

Smokers sueing cigarette companies for getting cancer, Fatties sueing McDonalds because they can't stop cramming big macs in their pie holes, people blaming video games, music, and movies for violent behavior. It seems to me that nobody wants to be responsible for their own actions anymore. Maybe we need to flush the whole human race and start over.

Originally posted by Demondeluxe:Smokers sueing cigarette companies for getting cancer, Fatties sueing McDonalds because they can't stop cramming big macs in their pie holes, people blaming video games, music, and movies for violent behavior. It seems to me that nobody wants to be responsible for their own actions anymore. Maybe we need to flush the whole human race and start over.

Its simply the Judicial system at work. Even if we did start over like a new Starcraft match, the same crap would happen and people would exploit other people. I dont think Arnold is really against this. Maybe its his wife. Maybe its a bunch of tree-huggin' lobbyist. Bottom line is that its politics. No one makes decisions in the interest of the public, they make decisions in the interest of whoever the hell paid for their campaigns. Its the nature of the beast... or rather, its the nature of Man.

Originally posted by pyro409:I just see the humor in watching the political far right and far left try to save the rest of us from ourselves.

One could easily say I fail to see the humor in the political far right trying to save themselves from us.

Both comments are absurd, yet these bills get perennial attention, for no good reason..they fail morally in their intent and financially in impact.

Like the bored, but angry policeman, who wants to tackle crime but realize that attacking ACTUAL criminals is too difficult and dangerous, so they instead do the real life equivalent of "pick up that can" (after knocking it down of course) so do (some of) our politicians want to wag their finger at a huge industry.

In my neck of the woods the video game industry has joined forces with local universities and created a thriving economy, where you wouldn't have expected it before.

Originally posted by Demondeluxe:Smokers sueing cigarette companies for getting cancer, Fatties sueing McDonalds because they can't stop cramming big macs in their pie holes, people blaming video games, music, and movies for violent behavior. It seems to me that nobody wants to be responsible for their own actions anymore. Maybe we need to flush the whole human race and start over.

Wait a minute... video games never claim to be healthy for you, or to make you non-violent (with the exception of nitendo's powerpad and wii-fit).

Leland Yee, the author of the bill, has pledged to keep fighting. "While I am deeply disappointed in today’s ruling, we should not stop our efforts to assist parents in keeping these harmful video games out of the hands of children,"

Wow, I didn't know American Parents [any parent for that matter] were so pathetic at parenting that they need each and every special organization out there to hold their hand and do their job. Why not draft laws that keep dumbasses from having kids, like that dumbass with the 16 kids.

What the hell is wrong with these people? I mean I spent my childhood growing up in West Germany... yes West Germany... Commies were on the other side of the wall. I saw some really f'd up stuff over there... like the concentration camps, Berlin Wall w/guys walking around with AK47's and submachine guns, visited Amsterdam, I was only 8 then =(. That all happened between the ages of 3-10, look at me now; I turned out pretty damn good if I must say so. Have an Associates and Bachelors in applied science, own my Caddy, have my own place, starting my own biz, have a job. I know how I turned out so horrible? Why weren’t these special groups there to protect me?!?! Because I didn’t need them! My parents actually did their freaking flipping job of being a PARENT and watched out and over me!

I know that is a little off topic but it runs parallel to a lot of these “we need to protect the children from this and that” arguments these idiots keep trying to make. I will say this tho… after watching “The Bloob”, I was traumatized to the point that I wouldn’t east Jell-O for 2 months. lol

With some luck this will all end soon. When the gamer generation (and by that I mean the generation growing up today where almost everyone in it plays games of some form) has children they will understand and be able to manage their child's game time having grown up with games themselves. Sooner or later folks who didn't grow up with nintendo won't be reproducing anymore.

I agree that they should assist the parents, but making it illegal isn't assisting. That is like the difference between assisting someone in making dinner by pre-heating the oven, and assisting them by holding them down and shoveling food down their throats.If you want to assist parents, teach them. Tell them that it is up to them to restrict things they didn't want their children to see or do. I know as a kid I wasn't even allowed to watch Transformers because it had guns in it. Are you telling me that now with things like the V chip and Parental Controls that parents aren't able to stop their kids from playing GTA4 on a $400 dollar system and a $1000 TV?Forget kids being spoiled, parents are just being stupid.

Video games are getting bad though. You've got to realize that many of the violent games are always gonna get into the hands of kids that shouldn't be playing them. These games are just as bad as movies with their content.

How much did all those appeals cost the state of California, each state should be required to have a constitutionality officer which advises on the constitutionality of proposed legislation to avoid wasting tax payer money on fruitless bullshit like this.

I come from the UK where we have no written constitution. But decisions made in the US have impacts around the world becuase games are targeted primarily at the US market and the rating system that exists there.

My view is that the issue should not be whether it is constitutional or not. That law was written more than two centuries ago by people who could not possibly have imagined what the world would be like today. Decisions about today's problems should be made by the elected representatives that we vote for today, not people elected hundreds of years ago.

My political views are centre-right (in the UK political spectrum - from an Amercan viewpoint this probably translates to ultra-left-wing!). I therefore think that there is a strong argument that it is acceptable to place age-constraints on various activities. Some of these are black and white - a legal age to buy alchohol or cigrettes, etc. Some of these have shades of grey. Some films are perfectly suited to children, others are clearly for adults.

For those things with shades of grey, it is only sensible to have an independent agency assign age ratings. When those age ratings are assigned, it is then perfectly sensible that they should be legally enforced.

I think that it is perfectly sensible that a violent, bloody and gory film can be rated as an R (18 in the UK), which gives guidance that it is not suitable for children. But I think that it is nuts that in the US a young child can see that film in the cinema if they are accompanied by an adult. That's not freedom of speech, it's child abuse.

Yes, a parent should take responsibility for their children, but they cannot watch them 24 hours a day. If there are no restrictions on what they can buy, then it is far too easy for them to buy innapropriate DVDs or video games and hide them from their parents. Should it be legal for five year olds to buy alcohol because "It's the parent's responsibility" to make sure that they don't?

I'm a 32 year old adult who loves video games, but get frustrated that the medium cannot advance because of the continued nervousness that unsuitable games can far too easily get into the hands of young children. A good example is GTA IV, which can happily show violence, but draws a veil over sexual content. If GTA IV were a film, rated purely on it's sexual content it would not be rated higher than a 15, or possibly even a 12 in the UK. Even the violence might not rate higher than a 15 rating - 18 rated films such as Saw are far, far more graphic.

In my view, ratings are artificially higher for video games because it is so easy for children to get hold of games. As a result game designers are self-censoring so that they can get their games on shelves.

If games were rated under the same criteria as films (both in terms of violence and sexual content) and it were made illegal to sell such games to people under the indicated age and (crucially) parents were also better educated as to what the ratings mean, then we could get more mature and fully rounded games aimed at adults.

Those who oppose legally enforced age restrictions on games based on what people wrote two centuries ago are stifling the growth of the medium as a legitimate art form.

Frankly, the problem isn't that American parents are not taking enough responsibility or not putting enough effort into supervising their media consumption. People are more concerned than ever with restricting the media their children consume and I strongly suspect they put more effort into it as well.

The problem is the people, including those in this discussion, who mindlessly parrot the notion that it's really important to control what children watch and play. As with every situation like this no one wants to be thought of as the irresponsible person who carelessly sends the message that it's not a big deal what media children consume. So we all adopt a grave tone and agree that yes, it's really important that parents choose the right media for their children, especially when we are trying to establish our credibility as a responsible concerned person before objecting to things like these video game laws.

The problem is that if you keep telling people that it's important they carefully choose what media they expose their children to people will start to believe it. Moreover if we really had good reason to believe that a particular kind of media produced significant long term harms in exposed children then we should try to create barriers to children's access A few liberatarian types might still prefer a marketplace solution but I think that if faced with the media equivalent of the big product safety dangers of the past (lead in paint?) most of us would support a narrowly tailored law to reduce the amount of child exposure.

I mean this whole area smacks of hypocripsy and self-delusion. The only reason we should really be convinced that the media exposure (outside going all clockwork orange) of your child matters a great deal is if we actually had compelling evidence showing that one kind of exposure lead to substantially greater chronic harms than the other. However, if we had such evidence it would be just as irresponsible to encourage parents to reach their own conclusions as it is to do so with vaccines.

I think it's actually pretty clear that the whole media thing is really about the needs of the parents not those of the child. Parents desperately want to feel that they molding their children through their conciouss choices despite the host of studies suggesting that genetics and peer groups dominate (you can still choose where you live but this isn't the kind of control people want). Unsurprisingly the concern over violent media seems to track adult anxiety about their ability to control their children's enviornment not studies about the effects. Invariably when I hear of a family who restricts a certain type of media it's not because they went and looked up studies or summaries of the study results but because one of the adults in the house feels uncomfortable about that kind of content (be it violence, sex or whatever). If it makes you feel bad to have your children sitting in the living room shooting people so be it but don't claim it's for the kid's sake.

I am continuously confused by how people make this a free speech issue, as well as put all of the blame on the parents for what their kids do. First, this is not at all a free speech issue. No one is saying they can't make or sell the games. The laws are just trying to prevent kids from having access without parental guidance. Why can theaters disallow access to children for violent movies (that are passive and only last a few hours), while the state cannot restrict sales of video games (which are very active and can be played for 100s of hours).

Your ideal parent would be with their kids 24 hours a day, but in the real world this is not the case. The idea of a law restricting game access to minors only assists parents in their role with their children. If a kid can buy a game without their parents permission, and play it on weekdays before their parents get home from work, the parents might never know they even had the game...but what do you people do? You blame the parents, say that they need to keep better track of their children, while all the while they are working to provide for these kids. If this law were passed, no one would be keeping children from buying these games except their parents, and that is the way it is supposed to be.

Originally posted by Brad Green:I am continuously confused by how people make this a free speech issue, as well as put all of the blame on the parents for what their kids do. First, this is not at all a free speech issue. No one is saying they can't make or sell the games. The laws are just trying to prevent kids from having access without parental guidance. Why can theaters disallow access to children for violent movies (that are passive and only last a few hours), while the state cannot restrict sales of video games (which are very active and can be played for 100s of hours).

Your ideal parent would be with their kids 24 hours a day, but in the real world this is not the case. The idea of a law restricting game access to minors only assists parents in their role with their children. If a kid can buy a game without their parents permission, and play it on weekdays before their parents get home from work, the parents might never know they even had the game...but what do you people do? You blame the parents, say that they need to keep better track of their children, while all the while they are working to provide for these kids. If this law were passed, no one would be keeping children from buying these games except their parents, and that is the way it is supposed to be.

Well, when the child is an infant, it is watched 24 hours a day. Then it goes down as the child gets older. I think the idea is that children are supposed to be taught as soon as possible the ideals of the parents, so that they might keep those ideals as the 'leash' gets longer. Parents that do a better job decrease the chance that the child will act against their wishes. Some children might obey, and some might not. Disobedient children get punished when they get caught, which of course doesn't always happen. That's how it's been for thousands of years.

The issue as I see it is that some parents may not mind their children getting certain games, while other parents might care very much. It should be up to the parents to decide what's ok, and not the government or others.

Suppose the government passed a law requiring that individuals show proof they are over 21 before recieving NORML propoganda. Say on the grounds that messages supporting drug use are dangerous to children.

Obviously such a law would be unconstitutional as it would impose a content based barrier to the distribution of one viewpoint (pro-legalization of drugs) to adults while allowing messages with different content to reach them easily. After all such a law would mean that NORML political canidates couldn't go on TV, couldn't post their pamphlets in stores etc.. etc..

In fact imposing barriers on one form of speech in the name of protecting people is a classic form that censorship laws take.

If this case seems different to you suppose it was only retail booksellers who had to verify your age before selling books that advocated or approved of the use of drugs. Once again you have a situation where you end up interferring with the ability of adults to access one type of material (they might very well not want their name associated with this purchase) but not another.

The situation with games is constitutionally identical. The fact that little serious commentary is yet made through games is irrelevant. If free speech is to mean anything the supreme court can't be jumping in for us to decide what's important and what's not all the time.

However, it might pass constitutional muster to bar children from buying any video games. I'd object to this much less as well. The spirit of free speech is that the government shouldn't be the one making the judgments about what sort of content is good and bad.

Why can theaters disallow access to children for violent movies (that are passive and only last a few hours), while the state cannot restrict sales of video games (which are very active and can be played for 100s of hours).

Movie theaters are privately owned businesses, and as such they can restrict access to their property. The RIAA rating system is a purely voluntary system, carrying no force of law. This case is about the government deciding what is/is not ok for sale. Violation of which could land you in jail. They are not even close to the same thing.

Originally posted by BarkingGhostAR:Parenting is suppose to be done by the parents, not the Terminator.

That's not what his mom thought:

quote:

Sarah Connor: [voiceover] Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator wouldn't stop, it would never leave him. It would never hurt him or shout at him or get drunk and hit him or say it was too busy to spend time with him. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers that came over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only thing that measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice.